


monsters and men

by littlearrows



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Alternate Universe - Zombies, F/M, Kid Fic, anxiety cw, blood cw, grief cw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-21 18:08:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3701609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littlearrows/pseuds/littlearrows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He hasn’t talked to another person in a long time before today. He needs this, so he doesn’t go rabid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	monsters and men

It’s been five months since he was separated from Octavia, and Bellamy is starting to go rabid. It happens these days—people, mad with anguish or fear or anger or what the fuck ever, forget how be a person. They start living in the trees and cover themselves with mud and leaves and eat their meat raw. Bellamy doubts he’ll ever get there; he’s always preferred his meat charred, likes the bitter burned taste in his mouth. But the rest—the trees, the mud and the savagery of allowing his grief to eat him from the inside out—he sees an appeal to.

It’s a Tuesday when he meets her.

(At least he thinks it is. He stole a watch from a house he and Octavia crashed in one night that told you what day it is. He thinks it still works; although for all he knows it was broken to begin with.)

He woke up on the Tuesday with his stolen jeep surrounded by grounders, all scratching at the windows. He grabs his gun, bemoans cars that don’t have sunroofs, and rolls down the window. He shoots two ( _Headshot!_ Octavia would have shouted. _Ten points!_ ) and gets out.

Turns out, there’s a _fuckton_ of grounders out here, which must mean Bellamy is the only person around for miles. The grounders can smell out living people, which makes them easy to hunt but a bitch to get rid of. Bellamy’s never been much of a hunter though, at least a grounder hunter. He’s run across a few people over the years that love shooting grounders in the head and watching their blue blood get splattered across the pavement. Octavia called them psychopaths, and Bellamy privately agreed.

Bellamy shoots three more as the others make their way to him. He hears a shot that’s not from his gun, and then a half second later the grounder closest to him has his head split open. He takes three more down, and his mystery shooter gets two. Pretty soon the two of them get all the grounders. He’s just about to call out to them, demanding that they show themselves, when he feels a grounder’s slimy rotting hands grab at his feet and pull hard. He falls to ground and loses his gun. It’s just out of reach when he sees the grounder crawl out from underneath the jeep, and open its mouth. It’s going to bite and infect him and then he’ll never be reunited with Octavia. He tries to reach out for a rock or something to bash the grounder’s head in, but there’s nothing.

But his mystery rescuer doesn’t let him get bitten. He sees her come around the front of the car, pull out her machete and take the grounder’s head off in five seconds flat. It falls against his neck and he swats the head away as she helps him up. She quickly shoves him up against the jeep and holds a knife to his throat.

He gets a better look at her now. She has blonde hair that’s long and tangled and was pretty once upon a time. She had a scar above her right eyebrow that looks like it was from a once deep wound. A knife, maybe? But her most striking feature is the bright blue grounder blood that’s smeared across her face, as if she stuck her hand inside a dead grounder heart and painted her face with it blood. Her bared teeth are also a pretty prominent feature, and they’re directed at him. For a second he thinks she’s another grounder. But his gun is still out of reach and after a second she starts talking.

“Who are you? Why are you in my territory?”

And—fuck. Bellamy didn’t know there were personal territories in this area. Some places have them, and their inhabitants are just as deadly as grounders. People get fiercely protective over their land. And this girl looks like she’s ready to kill.

“I’m just passing through,” he says, fake calm in his voice. He’s good at soothing; he used to rock Octavia to sleep when she was a baby, before the damn apocalypse. After their mom got bitten and they had to leave her and Octavia would scream and cry into the night, Bellamy would rock her to sleep then too.

He’s not calm though, and he’s thinking of a way to get the knife away from her. A quick look at her shows that she’s not picky when it comes to weapons—she has a rifle slung across her back, a machete in a sheath at her waist, a knife tied around her calf with twine and a pistol in a thigh holster, plus the knife at his neck. He also sees that she has a baby in a sling around her torso.

“Cute kid,” he says, although she has it bundled up so well that all he can see its feet sticking out. “Don’t worry; I won’t hurt you if you let me go. But if you don’t then I’d hate to take that knife from you and leave a kid without a mom.”

He sees her consider her options for a second before lowering the knife. “Stay against the car or I will shoot you,” she says. She kicks his gun even farther away, grabs her pistol form its holster, sheathes the knife and backs up. He puts his hands up, which he saw on a poster he and Octavia saw when they were crashing overnight in a trailer about five years ago.

She smiles insincerely and doesn’t lower the gun. “Who are you?” She asks again.

“Bellamy. I’m just passing through, honestly. I’m looking for my sister.”

“What’s her name? How old is she? A lot of people pass through here.”

“If I get in the car and reach for the glove box, will you shoot me?” He doesn’t wait for an answer, just gets Octavia’s picture out of the glove box. It’s a Polaroid. She found the camera about two years back, and took a million pictures of herself and Bellamy before she ran out of film. He gets out of the car and hands the picture to the girl. “Her name is Octavia. I think she’s about 17, or 18. I don’t fucking know; we lost track of time. I lost her about five months ago, I think. Just woke up and she was gone.”

The girl examines the picture closely before saying, “Yeah I know her. She passed through here about at the beginning of the season. She was traveling with a bunch of people. They didn’t stay long, but she didn’t say anything about a brother.”

She says the last part to get a rise out of him, and he knows it. She tries to read the emotions on her face, but he keeps it clear of _hurt anger betrayal why aren’t you crawling your way through this world trying to find me? why aren’t you being eaten alive from missing me?_

He opts instead for asking, “Did she say where they were headed?”

“They’re going to the Ark.”

“The Ark?

“A refugee camp, near where Washington D.C. was once. I’m from there, the Ark and Washington.” She pauses for a long time, pistol still aimed at him. “If you give us a ride, I can take you to Octavia.”

“How do I know you’re not lying?”

“You don’t. Will you drive us or what?

He shouldn’t. He knows that trusting strangers these days will only leave you with a knife in your skull. Octavia always wanted to pick up every stray person they came across, but he was always so careful. Never pick up strangers, no matter what they’re offering.

But

He aches from missing her. When the grounders clawed their way out of their graves and the epidemic spread and everything was lost, he still had her. And on an impulse he says

“Okay. You and the baby. Just you two. Okay.”

She nods and puts her pistol away. “It’s just the two of us anyways. Let me go get my pack, and then we can go.” She scampers off around the car as he gets in and hot wires it to get it started. He sees her disappear into a thick patch of forest and prays to a god he doesn’t think exists that she won’t kill him before he sees Octavia.

She reappears while he’s praying with a backpack that’s falling apart. The baby is squalling when she slams the car door shut. “Sorry about him; we woke him up. Hope you’re okay with crying.” He doesn’t say that he’s been okay with a baby’s cries since he was seven and his mother pulled Octavia from her body in the barn they were squatting in. That he’s been okay with cries since his mother charged him with keeping Octavia quiet so people didn’t know they were hiding out in abandoned buildings.

She pulls a book of maps out of her backpack. He recognizes it as the United States. She flips to what was once Oregon and points to a spot next to the coast. “That’s us. Washington is on the other side of country. Take the road we’re on now going south. Hopefully the highways signs will still be up, we’re going on this road until we get to highway 199,” She says, over the crying baby.

He starts driving.

“Oh, before I forget,” she says, and reaches into her pack as the baby screams on. She pulls out a water bottle full of bright blue grounder blood, unscrews the cap, reaches her hand in and hits the side of Bellamy’s face, splattering blood across his face. “It makes you smell less human, so they’re less likely to hunt you,” she says, cutting off the _what the fuck do you think you’re doing_ he was planning on shouting at her. She wipes her hands clean on her and the baby’s arms before putting the bottle away.

She quiets the baby after a few minutes and takes him out of his sling. He really is cute—about a year old, brown hair almost to his shoulders and blue eyes. He coos happily at his mother(? sister? stranger who found him on the side of the road?) and she smiles and blows raspberries against his neck. Eventually, after a half hour of silence, she talks to the baby. “We’re going to the Ark, to where Mama grew up.” Ah. Mother. “You can see Washington.” He puts his fingers in her mouth and she pretends to nibble on them. Her son laughs.

“Hey, what’s your name?” He asks. He hasn’t talked to another person in a long time before today. He needs this, so he doesn’t go rabid.

“I don’t think we should do names,” she says coldly. “And I should warn you: if you touch me or my son I will cut your hands off.”

“Noted, princess” he says sarcastically. “If you’re lying to me about Octavia, I’ll shoot you in the head.” She nods. “How many days until we get to the Ark?” The sooner he’s rid of her, the better. Hopefully they’ll get there quickly and can go their separate ways.

“No clue,” she says. “A few weeks, maybe? It’d be months if we were walking, but since we’re driving…I don’t know. Sorry. And don’t call me princess.”

“Sure thing, princess,” he says. She scoffs before pulling a towel out of her backpack. She drapes it across her chest so he can’t see and starts breastfeeding the baby.

“Hope you don’t mind,” she says.

“Nope.”

It’s quiet of the rest of the day. There’s a gigantic tree that’s fallen over and blocked the road to get on highway 199, and they silently clear the path. Princess puts Baby on the ground to let him crawl around by the car while she takes her machete to the tree, making it easier for them to carry. The whole process takes a few hours, but other than that it’s an incident free day. They don’t spot any grounders when they pull off to the shoulder of the highway to stop for the night. When he gets the jeep in park, she pulls cans of carrots and spam out of her backpack and offers him some.

“Thanks,” he says.

“No problem,” she answers. “You can feed us tomorrow.”

They split everything down the middle. She gives Baby some carrots to chew on, since they're mushy. She chews up the spam before signaling Baby to open his mouth. She spits her food in his mouth like a mother bird feeding her chicks and Baby babbles happily. Bellamy gives Princess his last few bites of spam, figuring that’s fair since she had to split her food.

He tries for conversation. “When did you leave the Ark?”

Apparently he’s out of practice because she flinches away from the question. He doesn’t expect her to answer and is about to mumble sorry when she says, “When I was 14, seven years after the grounder epidemic started. So, four years ago. Or four and a half. What month is it?”

He shrugs. “Why’d you leave? Was it not safe anymore?” He hopes for his sake she’s not leading him into a trap. He hopes for her and her son’s sake she didn’t lead Octavia into a trap.

“It was safe. I’m sure Octavia is there by now. Let’s get some sleep. We should start at sunrise tomorrow.”

He recognizes her desperate need to get out of this uncomfortable conversation. “You and the baby can take the backseat. I’ll sleep up here.” She nods and scrambles with Baby over the center console into the backseat. She takes her weapons off and sets them on the floor, keeping a knife in her hand.

“Don’t forget: if you touch us, I’ll cut your hands off,” she says. She lays Baby across her chest, closes her eyes and falls asleep. Bellamy does the same a few minutes later.

__________________

The next three days go smoothly. Sort of. The sign to get on the other highway had been torn down, so they wasted a day on the wrong highway before they figured it out. And Princess insists on them stopping every time they see a grocery store. Bellamy hates grocery stores; there’s too many people lurking around, which draw grounders to them. But Princess sticks Baby in the sling and heads inside anyway. Bellamy goes after them, as backup against grounders and people. Princess paints their faces and coats their arms with grounder blood before they go inside. It smells, but Bellamy doesn’t complain since it seems to be working. Princess always goes into the back of the store to get canned fruits and stuff. She claims that the back is almost always still full of food, because people still think they're not allowed back there. She’s usually right.

She also likes Bellamy to pull off to the side of road when they have clear visuals (no grounders, no people as far as the eye can see) to let the baby get out and practice walking. “I worry about him not walking enough. He’s in the sling most of the time, so I can keep him safe,” she says. Bellamy finds out that he’s about a year old and can walk if she holds onto his hands. “He can walk a few steps without me, but he doesn’t like to,” she explains.

“My sister was the same way, when she was that age.”

“How old were you when Octavia was born?” It’s strange for him to hear her say Octavia’s name, so casual. As if they were old friends. Bellamy is the only one who’s ever said her name like that.

“Seven. It was just the two of us growing up, so I had to teach her how to walk and talk and stuff,” he says.

“Were your parents dead?” She’s blunt, and stares him right in the eyes when she asks.

“Nope. Our dads abandoned us, or maybe Mom never told them we existed. I don’t know,” he explains. “And Mom was… not all there, mentally? You know? And she was a prostitute and stuff. She did the best she could but… for the most part it was just me and O. And Mom died right at the beginning of the epidemic, so it’s been just us two for eleven years now.”

Princess hums in acknowledgement, and makes funny faces at Baby while trying to get him to walk to her. Baby is uninterested and sits down on the asphalt highway. She sighs and puts him back up on his feet.

“So, what about your parents?” Bellamy asks. “Are they still alive?”

For a while she ignores him and makes encouraging sounds to Baby. Bellamy’s just about to get back in the jeep for a quick nap when she says, “They were alive before the epidemic. Dad died a while ago; Mom’s still alive. I think. She was alive when I left the Ark.”

“Did he get bitten? My mom did.”

“Nope, just killed by regular people. Let’s eat lunch and then we can start driving again.”

They pull over one more time that afternoon when they see another car that’s surrounded by dead grounders, and one dead person holding an axe. Princess gathers up some more grounder blood in her water bottle and leaves Baby to nap in the jeep. Bellamy siphons gas from the other car and whacks the head off the dead guy, so that he won’t rise up and become a grounder. It’s gruesome, but someone’s got to do it. She helps him rolls the bodies and the heads off to the shoulder of the road before they get back to driving.

__________________

The store that used to be a Wal-Mart is crawling with people—mostly men who are bigger than Bellamy. He’s not small but the apocalypse has a way of weeding out people who aren’t strong. He grips his gun a little tighter. Princess is holding a knife in one hand and had protective arm around Baby’s sling. She eyes them men warily. They look at her as if she’s a piece of meat. Bellamy stands closer to her.

“Let’s just get in and get out,” she says under her breath to him so that the others can’t hear.

“We have food,” Bellamy counters. “Let’s just get in the car and drive away.”

“We could always use more food,” she says. They go inside.

They’re immediately greeted with a gunshot and a holler. Somebody shot a grounder, by the sounds of it. Bellamy and Clarke go in the direction of the shot to see if they could help. “Hey if we get separated, just meet back at the car and wait,” Bellamy says. It’s easy to lose track of someone else when you’re busy shooting.

There’s a few grounders milling around and people are taking shots at them. Bellamy and Princess turn the corner and a grounder grabs Princess and starts lunging in to take a bite. She reacts quickly, stabbing it in the head. It lunges backwards for a minute before coming back down against her, harder and more frenzied than before. She puts her hand that was holding the knife on its face to try and shove it away. “Move,” Bellamy shouts. “Move your hand!” She moves her hand and wraps it protective around Baby. Bellamy shoots the grounder in the head.

“Thanks,” she says, and takes a deep breath.

“Can we go now?” Bellamy asks.

“Let’s just get to the back and get some more food. I’m sure there are cans of fruit or something.”

They head to the back of the store. There’s still a lot of stuff back there—canned oranges and pears and green beans. “Hey, go get another backpack. They should be around here somewhere, over where it says school supplies,” she says. “I’ll be right here.”

“I don’t think we should split up. We have enough food, and I can go hunting for animals and stuff. I _like_ hunting.”

“Just go get the backpack,” she says. She sounds tired. “There are a million people here and they’re all taking care of the grounders. It’ll be fine.”

He leaves to go get the backpack. He sees a big sign that says school supplies and heads in that direction. He sees three grounders on the way and kills them, even though they weren’t coming his way. The grounder blood works, unless you get too close. He hears shouting coming from the other side of the store. He wants to go check it out and help, but he mostly just wants to get out there as soon as possible.

He grabs the only backpack that’s left—a Care Bears backpacks that more likely to fit Baby than it is Bellamy. But still. He goes back to find Princess.

She’s not there anymore. He figures that she probably went to go help the other people deal with the grounders. He loads up his backpack with some food before leaving the back of the store. He goes to the hunting section of the store to see if there’s any bullets left. There’s one package of the kind that he needs so he grabs it. He checks the back and sees three more packages left there too and grabs those. He goes to the camping section and sees that it’s been cleared out. He thought it would be, but it can’t hurt to check.

He goes back outside to the car and sees Princess and Baby waiting there. They’re surrounded by some of the men that were loitering around outside. One of them touches Princess’ face and another grabs her arm. She stabs him in the wrist with a dagger she had hidden up her sleeve. Bellamy feels proud.

The men around her get mad at her though, and move in like they’re going to hurt her. Without thinking, Bellamy shoots one of them in the head. His brains and blood get sprayed all over the others. Baby starts crying at the noise. “Princess, get in the car,” Bellamy says. She turns around and gets in the car, locking the door behind her. She turns around and locks the backseat passenger door too for good measure.

The men turn to Bellamy and train their guns on him. “That was mistake, boy,” one of them says. Bellamy shoots him in the heart.

“Anybody else?” Bellamy shouts at them, training his gun on the group.

“Hey man,” one of them says. “We don’t want any trouble. You should in the car with your girl and your baby and get out of here.” Bellamy moves towards the car with his gun still aimed at them. He gets in, hotwires it quickly and peels out of there.

“I hate when it’s people,” he says, his eyes trained on the road. “Did you get any blood on you?”

“A little bit,” she admits. He looks at her and sees her face painted with a mix of cold blue grounder blood and hot red human blood. She doesn’t move to wipe the blood off.

__________________

Princess is lost.

She claims that she isn’t, but he can see her looking at the maps every ten seconds and then looking at the road signs.

“Are you sure I shouldn’t pull over until you figure out where we are?” He asks.

“I know where we are, okay? I just…can’t seem to find it on the map.”

“So we _are_ lost?”

“We are…a little bit, maybe, a titch lost.”

“I’m pulling over.”

“No!” She exclaims. “I’m almost positive that we’re on the right road and we really shouldn’t be wasting any more time.”

“Wasting any more time? You have us pull over every five seconds!”

She shushes him, and glares at her sleeping baby. “Do not wake him up. He’s been fussy all day.” As if Bellamy hadn’t noticed. “He hates the car.”

“Well he better stop hating the car because his _mommy_ is stretching this trip out as long as she possibly can,” he says.

“Sounds like _someone_ _else_ is a little fussy today too,” she murmurs under her breath, just loud enough for him to hear.

“Maybe I am a little _fussy_ ,” he says, and pulls over. “Because the baby was crying all morning and it’s pouring down rain and you can’t read the map that you’ve assured me fifty times that you can definitely read.” He takes a breath. “Let’s just stop for the day. It’s three o’ clock now and I can barely see a thing past the rain. We can just sleep all afternoon.”

“Fine,” she says. “But pull off the highway. I don’t being this exposed when we can’t see what’s coming. Let’s just spend the night in one of the houses over there. I think I see fences.” She points to what might be houses in the distance. It’s not a terrible idea; tall wooden fences like the ones around backyards usually keep the grounders out. Bellamy, Princess and Baby can park in the driveway and run into the backyard to get inside. It’ll leave the car exposed to people who want to steal it, but Bellamy’s not particularly attached to the jeep.

They drive through the neighborhood and pick a house at random. It’s one story, which makes defending it easier. When they get inside, Princess goes rummaging through the kitchen to find a lighter while Bellamy checks the laundry room for flashlights and batteries.

Most houses have been picked clean by now, but there’s still a lighter and one flashlight left in this house, so they count themselves lucky. Princess starts lighting candles and opening blinds while Bellamy searches the house to make sure no one else is here. They’re alone.

“Hey, come here!” Princess shouts. “I found something.”

Bellamy goes back into the living room and sees Baby sleeping on some pillows Princess has laid out on the floor. When he looks at her, she’s smiling and holding… a metal box?

“What is it?”

“It’s a portable Blu-ray player. I checked, and it still has a ton of battery life. We could watch a movie.”

A movie. Bellamy almost forgot about those. He and Octavia used to sneak into the movie theaters on Friday and Saturday nights when their mom was working. Octavia made him see the Disney movie about the Egyptian warrior Queen about four hundred times.

“Okay yeah,” he agrees. “Won’t it wake Baby, though?”

Princess giggles. “Baby? Is that what you call him?”

“Hey,” Bellamy says, “Baby beats calling him It. You could just tell me his name though and then I wouldn’t have to call him Baby or It. It’s good for babies to hear their names.” He makes that part up, but he figures it might be true.

Princess sighs. “Fine,” she says, “just his. You don’t get my name and I don’t get yours.”

“Deal,” he says, “although I still think it’s a stupid rule, Princess.”

She ignores him. “Collins. His name is Collins.”

Collins. Bellamy rolls that around in his head a few times before deciding that it suits him.

“It was his dad’s last name, back when last names still mattered,” she continues.

His dad. Huh. Bellamy had assumed that Baby— _Collins_ —had never had a dad; that Princess had slept with some stranger that passed through her territory and nine months later had a baby. But now that he thinks of it monogamy suits her, somehow.

She’s still talking. “Anyway, it won’t wake him because he sleeps like a rock and I’m sure we can find headphones.” Bellamy thinks Princess must be delusional when it comes to her son’s sleeping habits because the kid wakes up fifteen times a night. It’s Princess who sleeps like a rock. Collins will babble and crawl around the car all night and wake Bellamy up.

Princess goes into the kitchen and finds a pair of headphones, picks a Blu-ray randomly from the collection above the TV, hands him the right headphone and starts the movie. Collins snores in his sleep.

It’s about a girl from Earth, that turns out to be a princess in space. It has horrible writing, but cool special effects and it feels familiar, like he watched it before Octavia was born once in a motel room waiting for his mom to get back to him. It has an actress that’s exactly his type and if he can ignore the fact that she’s probably dead by now, he lets his mind wander to all the things they could do together if they were alone in a room.

Princess is sleeping with her head on his shoulder by the time the movie is over. He knows he should wake her or at least move her up onto the musty couch but…

He feels comfortable with her, here in this big house with the rain banging against the windows and her son sleeping next to them. Like a dream from a life he could have never had, even if the apocalypse didn’t happen. He lets himself enjoy it for a little while longer.

A few minutes however later Collins starts prattling, “Mama mama mama mama mama.” Bellamy readjusts Princess’s head so it’s resting on the couch behind them before he goes to pick Collins up. He knows Princess wants him to walk, but he can’t resist holding babies. It’s been comforting to him ever since Octavia was born. He keeps Princess’s warning about her cutting his hands off in the back of his mind though, and hides a dagger up his sleeve. He doesn’t want to hurt her, but he will. To save his own life, he will.

They head into the kitchen to get green beans and beet cans from her backpack. Bellamy also grabs some of the deer meat he hunted and cooked yesterday and sets it aside. He fixes Collins a plate of green beans and beets on a piece of china he found in the kitchen.

It’s the first time he’s ever fed Collins. It goes well until Collins smashes the beets up between his little fists and Bellamy has to hand feed him the crushed bits. He misses being around babies. Octavia was the perfect baby, so quiet and happy. Collins in a good baby too, but not like she was.

Bellamy rips off a tiny bit of deer meat, and chews it up like he’s seen Princess do. He gives Collins the same signal she does and he looks confused for a minute—like _uh hello? Mom’s the only one that does this_ —before opening his mouth. Bellamy tries to transfer the food like she does, but most of it ends up on his lap instead of in Collins’ mouth. He picks it up and puts it on Collins’ tongue.

“You have to push with your tongue,” he hears Princess say. He didn’t know she was awake. She doesn’t look like she’s about to cut his hands off, so it seems okay that he’s holding Collins. “It takes some getting used to. Here, give him to me so you can have dinner.”

After she feeds Collins the deer and breastfeeds, she gets her own dinner. When she’s finishes, Princess goes into the backyard to wash the dishes they used off in the rain. He doesn’t know why.

“It just feels like something I should do,” she says, when she comes back in soaking wet. She takes off her jacket, shoes and jeans, and puts some grounder blood on her face and neck from where it washed off. She has on dark gray underwear, but Bellamy tries not to notice. “I’m gonna go see if there’s any board games or something that we could do to pass the time,” she says and walks Collins into the other room. Bellamy lays her clothes over the kitchen chairs so they can get dry.

She brings back Clue and they play five rounds before getting bored with it. Collins is asleep on Princess’ lap and Bellamy can feel himself nodding off too. “Let’s go find somewhere to sleep,” she says.

There’s a master bedroom at the end of the hallway, by the bathroom. Princess sets Collins in the middle of the bed and she lays beside him. Bellamy is turning to go find a spare bedroom, or sleep on the couch, when she says, “Hey sleep in here. That way in case someone breaks in we won’t be separated.”

“I’m not sleeping on the floor when there’s probably another bed. It’ll be fine,” he says and goes down the hallway.

“Hey!” She shouts. She must wake Collins up because he starts fussing. Bellamy goes back and waits in the doorway while she picks Collins up and holds him close to her. “Just sleep on the bed with me. It’ll be fine. Don’t be such a baby. We can put pillows between us if you want.” She quiets Collins and puts him back in the middle. He plays playing with the blanket.

Bellamy pulls up the sheet on the bed and they all get under. He doesn’t put up a pillow barrier. The sheets smell horrible and are moth-eaten but it’s better than he’s had in weeks. “Hey I don’t know what your rules are. _I_ wasn’t the one threatening to cut _your_ hands off.”

“Well I didn’t know what kind of person you were back then.” She says this as if they’re been friends for years, and not just a few days. “Just go to sleep now. Hopefully the rain will pass by morning and we can get on our way.”

He falls asleep quickly and manages to get a few hours in before he wakes up and hears Princess whispering, “Hey are you awake?”

“I am now,” he mumbles, his face smashed into the pillow.

“Do you ever think about what you would be like, if the epidemic never happened?”

He opens his eyes. She’s staring right at him. She looks like she might have been crying.

“Not really,” he admits. He moves his head so he can speak clearer.

“I think about it a lot,” she says. “My parents were…they were really important people. I would have gone to the best schools, had the best house….I don’t know. I was only seven. I barely had time to even be a person. I wonder what I would have liked. Collins’ dad…would I still have loved him? Would Collins even exist?” She takes a shaky breath, and exhales. She does that four times. “Don’t you ever feel like you died the day the epidemic started, and had to start living as a different person?”

No. He doesn’t. But he’s always felt like this world is the one he was born for—with all of its cruelties and ruggedness and grief. It makes sense to him, in a way the old world never did. He feels more comfortable with a gun in his hand shooting at grounders than he ever did at the mall or the grocery store.

He can see it’s different for her. There’s something polished underneath Princess’ exterior. Even with the unnaturally bright blue blood painted on her skin and the mud caked in her hair, she still washes the dishes after she’s uses them and puts them away. She has an excess of weapons and doesn’t completely understand any of them. She wasn’t carved out for this life like he was.

But still. She’s surviving when so many have died. There’s something in her that will fight. He thinks that’s what he likes most about her.

It’s quiet for a long time. He doesn’t know what to say. She’s still staring right at him.

“The first time I killed a grounder, I cried for three hours, and then puked. I couldn’t sleep for days,” she finally says. She sounds like she’s about to start crying again. “Now I don’t even think twice. I don’t know when that happened. I’m trying to be the good guy, but it’s so hard. I don’t know when I became a killer.”

He reaches out underneath the blanket to hold her hand. “Who we are and who we need to be to survive are two very different things,” he says. “You’re not a killer, Princess. You’re a girl—a _woman_ , a mother—that’s trying to live. That doesn’t make you a killer.”

“Clarke,” she says.

“What?”

“My name is Clarke. Don’t call me Princess.”

“Okay, Clarke. My name is Bellamy.”

“Hi, Bellamy.”

“Hi, Clarke.”

“Sorry I woke you up. Go back to sleep.”

They both close their eyes at the same time. They fall asleep holding hands.

__________________

It’s drizzling the next day, so they leave. Clarke found the name of the city they’re in from a piece of mail that was sitting on the counter so they at least figure out where they are. They somehow took a huge detour and ended up in Colorado. It’s been a week and they’re not even halfway there.

But Clarke is excited. “Oh, I actually know exactly where we are. Finn—that’s Collins’ dad—took me on this little backroad through the Rockies when we were crossing through. It goes over this really pretty river with all these flowers. It should only be like an hour north of here.”

They stop four times at grocery stores and a one hour trip turns into a three hour trip. “Turn right, turn right, turn right!” Clarke is breastfeeding, braiding her hair, looking at the map and barking out order all at the same time. Bellamy is sometimes amazed with her. He turns right.

The backroad is made of mud that’s so thick the jeep starts to sink if he doesn’t go fast enough. He thought that’s what four wheel drive was for. Eleven year old piece of shit car.

They get to the bridge, which looks like it had a bomb taken to it. “Uh,” Clarke says, “shit. This bridge definitely existed last time I was here.”

“We have to ditch the car and walk across the river. It doesn’t look that deep.”

“Why can’t we just drive across it?”

He drives to accelerate, but the jeep stays in place. It’s sunk too far into the mud. “We can find a new car. I’ve done it a hundred times. Let’s go,” he says. She starts to wrap Collins up in his sling, but Bellamy stops her. “Hey, give me Collins, in case the water really is deep. I’m taller.”

She looks at him wearily but hands Collins and the sling to him. She helps him wrap it correctly and gets Collins snuggled in. She kisses his forehead twice.

They get out and run to the sandy shore to avoid sinking into the mud like the jeep, Bellamy holding Collins close to his body so he doesn’t get jostled. “I’ll go first,” she says. “Don’t go until I’m all the way across.” She pauses. “Uh, in case the river is really deep and I drown or something, get Collins to the Ark.” Bellamy nods. Clarke kisses Collins one more time.

She makes it across easily, the water never rising above her waist. When Bellamy gets to the other side with Collins, she snatches up her son from him and kisses him. Then she takes off her jeans and Collins’ clothes and goes swimming.

“Hey Clarke, we should get moving, especially since we’re on foot for now.”

“Shush,” she says. “Collins and I haven’t had a bath in weeks. Get in and wash up. You stink. There’s a bar of soap in my backpack.” Bellamy sighs, realizing that he’s not going to persuade her. He takes off his shirt and jeans, makes sure his boxers are tight, grabs the bar and joins them in the water.

He hasn’t bathed in…he doesn’t know how long.

Collins and Clarke are splashing and giggling with each other in the water, so Bellamy washes up first. Him and Clarke exchange Collins and the soap when he’s done. Bellamy makes Collins a boat out of a leaf that’s floating in the water to play with. Clarke is done washing but has her eyes closed and is floating on her back. She looks peaceful. Bellamy figures that she deserves a break, so he lets her float on while he plays with Collins.

They end up spending most of the afternoon in the water. Bellamy worries about grounders and where they’re going to sleep tonight. There are a few tall trees that they could probably climb up and sleep in, taking the night in shifts. He hates not having a car. And all the grounder blood has washed off of them and their weapons are on the shore. They’re asking to be attacked. They’re not even trying to be quiet.

But Clarke is relaxed and Collins is giggling, so Bellamy keeps his comments to himself.

Around four in the afternoon though, he wishes that he has at least kept a knife on him, or Clarke’s machete, because he hears a rifle cocking. They turn back towards the shore and see a girl with a gun trained on them. She has a brace around her leg. If Bellamy had his knife he would throw it at her other leg and get them out of there. But he doesn’t.

“Don’t shoot,” Clarke says. “We’re just passing through. And you don’t want to hurt the baby.”

“You don’t know what I want,” the girl says, but she changes the position of the gun so she’s aiming at Bellamy now instead of Clarke. “Who are you?”

“I’m Clarke and the baby is Collins. He’s Bellamy. We honestly are just passing through. We just got distracted by the river. There used to be a bridge here.”

“I know,” the girl says. “I blew it up.”

“Why?” Bellamy asks.

“The Mountain Men were after me. But they don’t go in the river so, _bang_ I blew it up. It was easy—some explosive chemicals here, a gunshot there.”

“There are Mountain Men around here?”

The Mountain Men are a group of religious nuts who took the epidemic as a way of saying that God’s wrath was coming down on men. They think grounders are God’s holy creatures and try to emulate them as much as they can. They’re cannibals, eating each other once a season in a ritual sacrifice. Apparently they also don’t go in water, since grounders avoid the water. They also think that they’re the chosen people, and if you don’t convert they tie you to a post and feed you to the grounders. They scare the shit out of Bellamy, although Octavia always wanted to get in a fight with one.

“There was. I blew most of them up in the explosion and the others just scattered, I think. Or maybe they fed themselves to grounders or each other. Who cares? They’re gone now.” She puts the gun down. “I’m not going to shoot you. But you better get out of here quick. Wick is engineering this new gun for me and if you’re not gone when it’s done…well. Who knows?”

They wade to the shore and get dressed. They douse themselves in grounder blood. Collins is still giggling, unaware of the tension. The girl is making a wary face at him, like she didn’t know that children still existed and it’s jarring for her to see him. He reaches out for her and touches her face, which makes her jolt.

Bellamy is reaching for his gun, ready to pistol-whip her across the head so they have time to make a run for it. Clarke must read his mind because she puts her hand over his and shakes her head.

“Who’s Wick?” Clarke finally asks, her voice light and conversational, as if they didn’t just spend a few minutes wondering how they could kill the other.

“He’s my boyfriend.”

“Oh, okay,” Clarke says. Everyone just looks at each other for a few seconds, unsure if they should keep pretending to care about each other.

“Hey, are there any cars around here we could grab? We’re trying to get to the east coast,” Bellamy says.

“Yeah, there’s some up the road. I can take you. Don’t worry—I won’t shoot you unless you attack me first. I was bluffing about the new gun.”

They walk down the road together, mostly in silence except for Clarke talking to Collins. They’re trailing behind Bellamy and the girl, because Clarke is making Collins walk. They’re in what used to be the suburbs, which makes Bellamy nervous. Too many hiding spots for grounders or other people, and this girl could be leading them into a trap. She could be a Mountain Man, for all he knows.

“I’m Raven, by the way.”

“Nice to meet you,” Bellamy says, even though it’s not. He’s still not above hitting her over the head and making a run for it with Clarke and Collins. The thought is jarring, because he doesn’t know when _I_ because _we_. He tries not to think of it anymore.

“You too.”

They’re quiet the rest of the way until Bellamy asks if she needs him to help her walk. She’s limping pretty badly, mostly just hopping on one foot while dragging the other behind her.

She bristles when he offers to help. “I just need to readjust the brace. Let me just sit down for a second.” She sits on the sidewalk and tightens her brace, moves some things around. It looks pretty intricate. Bellamy’s impressed—with both the brace and the girl it’s attached to. It’s hard enough in this new world without also being disabled.

Clarke and Collins catch up with them. “Is everything okay?” She asks, and Bellamy and Raven say yes at the same time.

Raven gets back up and starts leading them down the road again. “What happened, if you don’t mind me asking?” Clarke says.

“This guy shot me. Not a Mountain Man, this was before. A few years ago.”

They don’t have anything to add so the rest of the trek to the new car is in silence.

The new car turns out to be a 2020 Cadillac Escalade. It was way too nice for Bellamy to have even looked at before the apocalypse. Now he hotwires it and unlocks the passenger door for Clarke and Collins.

“Oh, you know what? There’s a car seat in one of the cars in that garage,” Raven says, and points to a giant pink house on the corner. “I don’t know if it’s his size, but do you want me to go get it?”

Clarke agrees enthusiastically. A few minutes later Raven reappears with a car seat that looks about the right size for Collins. She also has two children’s books and a few toys, plus sunshades for the backseat windows. They take a few minutes trying to figure out how to install the car seat, before bidding Raven goodbye. Collins plays happily in the backseat with his new toys, sucking on a stuffed elephant’s trunk. Raven waves goodbye to them in the rearview window.

__________________

Clarke sits in the back with Collins, unless he’s sleeping. She reads to him softly or plays with his new toys with him.

“He’s never had toys,” she says two days after they get the new car. She says it quietly, as if she doesn’t want Bellamy to hear. She’s climbing over into the front seat while Bellamy slows and swerves to avoid the dead grounders littering the roads.

“Octavia and I never had any either,” he says. “We turned out okay. And he’s still a baby, so he won’t even remember. He’ll get new toys at the Ark.” Bellamy has no idea if there are children’s toys at the Ark, but it must give her some comfort because she smiles, a little.

“I always had a million toys before the epidemic,” she says, “like, a ridiculous amount of toys. Everything I wanted I got. You should have seen my house on Christmas morning.”

Bellamy’s Christmas mornings were usually spent waiting for their mom to get back home from work the night before and Octavia asking for breakfast. She never even knew Christmas was a holiday. He didn’t want her to feel left out.

The car stays quiet for half an hour, except for Collins’ snoring. Bellamy is driving slowly. He’s trying to avoid all the grounders on this one stretch of highway, but they're everywhere and occasionally the car accidentally runs one over. Somehow that feels crueler to him than when he shoots them or cuts their heads off. He wants to let the dead rest again. But there are brains all over the tires.

Suddenly, Clarke breaks the silence. “Can you teach me how to drive?”

“What?”

“I never learned. I can drive a motorcycle, but Finn always said it was really different than driving cars. If you teach me, you don’t have to be the one driving all the time.”

“I don’t mind driving.”

“Trust me; you need to take a nap once in a while. You look like shit.” She really knows how to compliment a guy. “Teach me once we get past this rough part.”

It’s late afternoon by the time the drive becomes smoother and the dead grounders have been rolled to the side of the highway by some Good Samaritan. Bellamy pulls off the highway and drives around a tiny Midwestern town until he finds a big enough parking lot to teach Clarke in. It’s a high school.

Bellamy turns the car off and they climb over each other to switch positions. There’s a grounder by the door of the high school that Bellamy keeps an eye on, but it doesn’t seem to be moving their way. Collins chirps happily in the backseat.

He tells Clarke to turn the car on and identify everything on the dashboard and why it’s important. She gets through most of it, talking about the gas meter and the speedometer. She tells him she doesn’t know why the mileage is important and he explains it to her. Then he tells her to put the car in drive, and step on the gas.

She stomps on the pedal. “Stop, stop stop!” Bellamy shouts. “Step on the break! Gently!” The car slows to a stop. Collins is giggling.

“Okay, okay,” Bellamy says, trying to catch his breath. “You have to press gently on the gas and then slowly press harder if you want to go faster. For right now keep us less than 30 miles per hour, okay Princess?”

“Don’t call me Princess,” she says, and accelerates slowly. Bellamy explains breaking into her turn and moving the wheel in the right direction and has her practice that for ten minutes. She only goes over the curb once. “This is boring; we’re just going in circles.”

Bellamy hums in agreement. “That’s all we need to do right now.” She practices turning for five more minutes, until Bellamy feels confident that she can do it. “Now, put the car in the reverse and do the whole thing over again. Put your hand on the seat and look behind you while you’re driving.”

It’s…nearly disastrous. She almost hits every light pole and she does go over every curb. He has her practice driving backwards for forty minutes, until she gets the hang out it.

“Let’s stop for early dinner. I’ll go take care of the grounder by the front door and then we can eat outside.” It’s the perfect temperature—warm with a chilly breeze. He takes Clarke’s machete and his pistol and goes to care of the grounder. It doesn’t even look in his direction before he shoots it in the head. Its brains splatter against the front door.

Clarke and Collins are already setting up for dinner when he gets back. There was an old picnic blanket in the third row of the car that she set down on the ground. Clarke is starting a fire away from Collins and the blanket so that she can cook the fish and deer Bellamy hunted yesterday. They also found some corn growing right on the stalk that they took some of, and she’s cooking that too. Bellamy lies down on the blanket next to Collins, who crawls into his lap and blows raspberries on Bellamy’s arm. Bellamy and Collins fake wrestle together until Clarke puts out the fire and brings the food over.

“So, when did you learn to drive?” Clarke asks through a mouthful of deer meat.

Bellamy gets some fish in Collins’ mouth before answering. “I learned when I was eleven.”

“Eleven? How did that work? That’s early, right?”

“Yeah, it was early. You weren’t allowed to start driving until you were sixteen, but my family never really paid attention the laws. We were living in this really bad neighborhood at the time and some of the older guys taught me how to hotwire cars so I could bring them to their boss. He would sell them for parts or something. Anyway they taught me how to hotwire the cars and then how to drive them. They said I was no use if I could do one but not the other. They taught me how to siphon gas. I didn’t even realize until like years later that they were all gang members. But their boss paid me for the cars pretty well all things considered and I got to buy Octavia food and clothes and stuff, so it turned out alright.”

Clarke is quiet for a few minutes, focused on feeding Collins. Finally she asks, “What was it like for you, when you were growing up? I mean, I know your mother was a prostitute and you didn’t have a dad. You’ve mentioned going to first grade, but haven’t said anything about school after that. Octavia was born in a barn, right?”

“Yep, a barn in Pennsylvania,” Bellamy says. He can feel himself blushing. He’s not embarrassed about the way he grew up, really he isn’t. It’s made him tougher and more ready for their strange new world. But he—he thinks Clarke was upper-class. She probably went to a preschool that she had to interview for, and was on the fast track to the ivy leagues. None of that matters anymore but still. Her house probably had a picket fence. He never even had a house

“We didn’t have healthcare or money or anything like that. We were squatting in this barn at the time—“

“What’s squatting?” Clarke asks.

“Living there even though we didn’t own it or rent it or whatever,” Bellamy answers. “We were in the barn and having dinner and Mom just turned to me and said, ‘Bell, I’m about to have the baby.’ And she did, like ten minutes later. She handed Octavia to me, sat down, told me to name the baby and passed out. I was really scared. I thought she had died or something. But she was fine the next morning.”

“Why’d you pick Octavia?”

“I used to be obsessed with the story of Augustus. He was the first Roman Emperor. He was Julius Cesar’s nephew and heir, so after he died Augustus stepped up. He started the _Pax Romana_ era and widened the entire Roman Empire. I wanted to be him so bad and he had a sister named Octavia.

“After Octavia was born, I stopped going to school. We were both off the grid anyways; we never had a permanent address or social security numbers or anything, so school always a pain to get into. And my mother…I didn’t trust her to take care of the baby. After Octavia was born, she sort of drifted in and out. She was asleep a lot or working or not able to look at us. I was better for Octavia, so I stepped up. I stole workbooks and stuff from bookstores, for me and O. She was never interested in them, but I kept up with them until the apocalypse. She learned how to read and write, some really basic math, but for the most part she didn’t care. That was hard. I always loved learning, and it used to make me mad that she didn’t.

“Uh, what else? We moved around a lot, traveling from the east coast to the west coast and back. We hitchhiked mostly, or when Octavia got around five we started jumping onto trains and getting places like that. It was hard. She was scared a lot, growing up. She was always worried the police were going to arrest Mom for prostitution, or arrest me for stealing and she was going to be alone. I used to tell her that fear is a demon and that we have to slay our demons. I think she did it, when the epidemic started and Mom died. She was a lot braver and bolder after that. She scared the shit out of me.” Bellamy laughs, thinking about it. “Then one day she got so brave and so bold that she bolted in the middle of the night when I was sleeping. And apparently she joined up with a big group of people to go to some camp in Washington D.C.” He sounds bitter now. It still hurts him think about her leaving; an open wound he doesn’t think will ever heal.

“Maybe she needed to find out who she was without you.” Clarke is quiet when she says this. She sets Collins aside and scoots next to Bellamy. She runs her fingers through his hair with one hand and holds his hand with her other. It feels nice—comforting in a way he never thought he would be comforted. It makes him want to cry, suddenly. He doesn’t do it though. His eyes don’t even well up. She guides his head so that it’s resting on her shoulder.

“I’m mad at her for leaving me,” he whispers. He’s never said that out loud before. He never even lets himself think it.

“I understand. I do. I’m mad at Finn for leaving me too, sometimes.”

“Did he leave you guys?”

“He died. Shot himself in the head.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“I know you didn’t. It’s okay.” She sighs. “I met him when we were fourteen, a few weeks after I left the Ark. When we sixteen, we found this bunker in the middle of the woods. It was made for the apocalypse—it had like a thousand batteries and tons of flashlights and food and blankets and stuff. It was empty though, like the people who built it never made it there. It made us sad, but we made a little home there. We had been traveling for two years together. He had been traveling since he was seven, when the epidemic started. We were happy there. Settled, you know? When I was in labor, he told me he was going to get me some water. He went outside the bunker and shot himself in the head. He had been bitten. I didn’t know it until later, after Collins was born. I went outside to try and find him and there he was. He had this huge bite on his shoulder that he was covering up with his shirt. I buried him a ways away from the bunker and just stayed on that territory until you came along. I would have gone rabid if it wasn’t for Collins.”

“Why _did_ you decide to come with me?” He’s thought about that a lot.

“Well, I wanted to go back to the Ark for a while. It killed me to think of leaving Finn and not knowing how to get back to him, but…I missed my mom. Despite everything she did, I missed her. And I wanted Collins to grow up around people. But I couldn’t just jump up and leave. If I was by myself then maybe I could. But with Collins, I knew I couldn’t spend a few months walking from one end of the country to the other. Almost no one drives, you know? They don’t know how to hotwire cars or siphon gas. I gave up on ever getting to the Ark, but when you came along, I felt…hopeful. Like maybe we could actually make it, you know?”

Bellamy nods. “Do you think Octavia made it to the Ark?” He whispers after few minutes.

“I don’t know. I hope so. I think about her a lot. I think she did. She’s a warrior, you know? And the people she was with were really intense and determined. I think they made it.”

He didn’t know Octavia was a warrior, but Clarke’s confidence gives Bellamy faith.

__________________

Clarke starts driving when the roads are clear. It’s mostly alright, even though she drives too slowly for Bellamy’s taste. He likes looking over at her from the passenger’s seat when she thinks he’s asleep and seeing the sun rays catching in her blond hair and hearing her drum on the steering wheel. She’s so beautiful.

Collins starts teething the day after Bellamy teaches Clarke how to drive. It’s a fucking nightmare.

__________________

There’s a tiny house right off the highway that they decide to settled into for the night. There’s a ton of farmland behind the house that Clarke hopes has a crop that they can actually eat without it having to be processed. Bellamy spots some rabbits running around the fields and decides that since it’s still light outside he should go hunting once they search the house to make sure they’re alone.

They wander around the house, looking for flashlights. Clarke still has one in her backpack from the last house they stayed in, which is helpful because they don’t find any.

“I’m gonna go catch some rabbits for dinner,” Bellamy says. Clarke waves him off as she settles on the couch with Collins, getting ready to breastfeed.

Bellamy likes hunting. He’s good at it, and he’s always loved being the one to bring Octavia back some food.

Rabbits are a bitch though, especially since he left his gun in the house with Clarke and only has his knife and her machete. He’s been trying not to waste bullets, since they’re both running low on them. They both agree that shooting grounders and other people is ideal, because that way they don’t have to get very close to them.

After a half hour of him running around the crops (which turn out to be wheat and are thus utterly useless to him and Clarke) trying to catch the fucking rabbits, he decides to set traps for them. He’ll check the traps in the morning to see if any of them catch anything. He spotted an apple tree and some blueberry bushes on the other side of the highway, so he goes around to the front of the house and crosses the highway to grab some stuff for dinner. He hopes there aren’t any grounders there.

As he’s picking apples, he hears Clarke shout, and then there are two gunshots. Bellamy drops the apples and sprints back to the house, machete in hand. He can hear men shouting.

When he gets inside, there are two boys with their backs against the wall, bullet holes in the wall next to their heads. One of them is Asian and the other is a tall white guy. The white guy’s arm is in a makeshift sling. They’re stammering, “Woah, woah, hold on, hold on!” and “We come in peace!” Clarke is on the other side of the room with her rifle pointed at them. Collins is on the floor behind her.

Bellamy doesn’t waste any time. He grabs the white guy and pushes him up against the opposite wall. The Asian boy moves to grab at Bellamy, but Clarke cocks her rifle and says, “I wouldn’t do that.”

Bellamy pushes the machete against the white guy’s neck. “Who are you? Why are you in our house?”

The boy looks at his friend, eyes wide and fearful, before saying, “Uh—we’re—uh—we’re just passing through. We, uh, we’re trying to get to California. Back to California. That’s where we’re from. Uh. California. We’re from California. We’ve been in, uh, we’ve been at the Ark, in Washington. You know the Ark? It’s a settlement. We uh, we were at the Ark and now we’re trying to get back to California.”

Clarke and Bellamy exchange a glance. “The Ark?” Clarke says. Her rifle is still trained on the Asian kid, but her voice has lost its ferocity.

“Yeah, we used to live there,” the white kid says. “Do you, uh, do you know it?” Bellamy takes the machete off his neck, but holds onto his arm to keep him in place.

“We’re headed there now,” Clarke says. “I’m from there, and Augustus is looking for his sister. She’s supposed to be there”

Augustus?

“Why’d you leave?” Bellamy asks. If it’s unsafe and Octavia is there then he’s packing up Clarke and Collins and won’t stop driving until he gets to D.C.

“Oh, we got kicked out,” the Asian kid says. “ _Someone_ didn’t replace some of the—uh— _herbs_ that maybe we used.” Despite himself, Bellamy chuckles.

The white laughs with him and then says while smiling, “Hey, uh, why don’t you let go of my arm and we can share some of our food with you guys?”

“Put all your weapons on the floor and kick them to me,” Clarke says, before Bellamy can say anything. The white kids get rid of a pistol that was in a holster around his calf and the Asian kid gets a knife out of his backpack and kicks it over to Clarke. Bellamy pats down the white kid to make sure there isn’t anything more before he lets the kid go. He does the same to the Asian guy. Clarke grabs a blanket and wraps all their weapons up in it before putting the blanket next to her backpack.

“I’m—uh—Augustus,” Bellamy says.

“Jasper,” says the white kid, and introduces the other one as Monty.

“Edith,” Clarke says. “The baby is Sol.”

“Oh, like the sun?” Monty says. Jasper makes a funny face at Collins.

“Exactly like the sun,” Clarke says. “What food do you have? We haven’t eaten since this morning.” They each had three strawberries this morning, and they both fed one of them to Collins. The last time they were full was yesterday afternoon, when they stopped to eat the last of their fish and canned oranges.

“We have some boar meat,” Jasper says. “And apples we picked this morning. We can split everything down the middle.”

They eat mostly in silence. Bellamy and Clarke take turns feeding Collins. Jasper and Monty won’t look Clarke and Bellamy in the eyes.

When they’re wrapping up their meal Monty says, “So, your sister’s at the Ark?”

Bellamy is using his spit to wipe up Collins’ face. “Yeah, hopefully,” he says. “Cl—Edith said that she met Octavia a few months ago and she was headed to the Ark then.”

“Oh, I guess I wouldn’t know her then,” Monty says. “We left the Ark right before winter, so we haven’t been there in a while.”

Clarke takes Collins and rubs Bellamy on the arm comfortingly. She must know that Bellamy is disappointed with them not knowing Octavia. He feels desperate for news about her, confirmation that she’s safe within the walls of a refugee camp. Sometimes, when Clarke and Collins are quiet or sleeping, he can feel himself going rabid again, his grief and anxiety about Octavia clawing their way to the surface.

It’s quiet for a few minutes except for Jasper and Collins exchanging weird noises at each other.

“Hey, um, who’s the president? At the Ark?” Clarke asks.

“It was President Griffin when we left,” Jasper says, “but the elections were coming up after the New Year, so that might have changed.”

“Doubtful though,” Monty says. “She’s been president since before the epidemic even started.”

“Is she the one that kicked you guys out?”

“Nope, that was her VP—Kane.”

“Oh,” Clarke says.

“Why?”

“I was just wondering.” Things are quiet again, except for Collins saying Mama over and over. “What happened to your arm?” Clarke asks Jasper.

“It’s my shoulder actually. I got cut up a few days ago when we got in a fight.”

“Did you stitch it up?”

“No,” Monty says. “We don’t know how. We got some water to clean it out and he’s trying not to move his shoulder so much.”

Clarke makes an exasperated sound. “I can stitch it up, if we can find a needle, or a pin.”

They search the house until Bellamy finds a needle in a bedside table in the master bedroom. He also finds some Neosporin and bandages. Bellamy pockets the last two before giving the needle to Clarke. She loosens a thread from Jasper’s jacket and gets to work. It takes a few minutes, and Jasper is gritting his teeth and hissing in pain the entire time. Clarke says sorry every time she threads the needle. Monty hands Jasper moonshine, which Jasper takes generous swigs of. Bellamy takes a little bit of that too.

“Hey Augustus, do you guys want a bottle?” Monty offers and hands him a bottle of cloudy white moonshine when Bellamy accepts.

“There, I’m done,” Clarke says. She washes off the cut with some of the moonshine. “This stuff is so foul it’ll kill any of the germs.” She takes a drink of it anyways.

“Hey, how do you know how to do stitches?” Jasper asks her as he checks himself out in a highway mirror, admiring his wound.

“It’s not that hard,” she says. “Besides, my mom was a doctor before… and at the Ark I was hoping to be one too.”

They each take turns drinking all night. Collins snoozes soundly on Bellamy’s lap while he regales the group with stories of World War II trivia and Filipino mythology, slipping and out of Tagalog as he tells the stories of Mapolan Masalanta and diwatas. Eventually they find a deck of cards and play poker for the rest of the night using silverware they found as chips. They play until Clarke falls asleep on the table.

“Hey, so, sorry about this, but you guys are going to have to leave,” Bellamy says. He feels bad about kicking them out—it’s well past midnight and the night is full of unseen grounders or murderous people. But he has his people and himself to worry about. “There was a house right down the road, on the other side of the highway that you can get to really easily.”

Jasper makes some protesting noises, but Monty tells Bellamy that they understand. Bellamy gives them their gun and knife back. He also steals a steak knife form kitchen and gives it to them. “You can never have too many,” he says, and Monty puts it away in his backpack. They leave without saying goodbye to Clarke or Collins. Bellamy watches them for as long as he can, and locks the door behind him. Just in case.

There’s a bassinet in the master bedroom that he puts a sleeping Collins into before he picks up Clarke and puts her on the bed under the sheets. He gets into bed next to her, holds her hand with his right and drapes his left hand protectively over Collins’ bassinet. He falls asleep like that.

The next morning he wakes up to Collins screaming and a massive hangover. Clarke is already awake and has taken him into the living room. It’s no use though; he’s been screaming every morning since he started teething. It’s hard on Clarke—Bellamy knows that she hates not being able to comfort him.

He goes into the living room and gestures for Clarke to hand Collins over, fighting the urge to vomit all over the baby. “Go get the car ready,” he says. He taught her how to hotwire it a few days ago. “We’ll be outside in a sec.”

She smiles gratefully at him and grabs their backpacks. She walks around the house a few more times, searching for anything that might be useful. Bellamy tells her to go look at the traps he put last night. She comes back with two rabbits, complimenting Bellamy on the traps. They go out to the car together and she puts the rabbits in the trunk while he straps Collins in. They’ll stop in a few hours to cook and eat the rabbits, so they don’t stink up the car.

Bellamy drives. After about half an hour of screaming Collins finally wears himself out and starts sucking on one of his stuffed animals. Clarke sighs happily.

“Who’s Edith?” He asks when Collins is quiet.

“Edith Hamlin. She was a landscape artist. My dad bought me one of her painting when I was a kid. I used to love her.”

“I didn’t know you liked art.”

“I love it.”

“And Sol?”

“That’s what Finn wanted to name Collins. Sol if he was a boy, and Luna if he was a girl,” she says. “He loved the stars and the night sky.” She sighs wistfully and Bellamy drops the subject.

Sometime later that morning, Bellamy asks, “Hey, why did you ask who the president of the Ark was?” It’s been eating away at him.

“I was just wondering.”

“Clarke, c’mon—“

She interrupts him. “I don’t have to tell you everything about my life, you know? Just drop it.”

“ _Fine_ ,” he says. She huffs at him. Whatever. If she wants to be in a bad mood and snap at him over a stupid little question, then she can deal with him snapping at her right back.

They spend the rest of the day not talking to each other. She takes over driving after lunch without a word, so he sits in the backseat with Collins and reads to him. That night they go to sleep in the car without saying goodnight.

__________________

The next morning everything is back to normal. Neither of them apologize, but neither of them are the kind of people to apologize over something so stupid.

“Hey, I think we’re in Ohio. We’re getting really close. It should be like tomorrow or the next day,” Clarke says that evening as she looks over her map.

“Seriously?”

“Yeah, I think so. Maybe.”

Tomorrow. He’ll be with Octavia tomorrow. He feels nervous all of the sudden. What if she’s not there? What if he did something horrible that made her leave and she hates him? What if she’s dead? The last one comes to him so suddenly and cruelly that he almost crashes the car into the streetlight on the median. He pulls over abruptly to the side of the road and gets out of the car. He sits on the concrete with his head between his knees, trying to catch his breath. _What if she’s dead? What if he came all this way and she’s dead?_

Clarke comes to sit next to him after a few minutes. She rubs his back, and hums a lullaby that he’s heard her sing to Collins. They stay like that for a long time.

“What if—what—what if, what if,” he tries to talk to Clarke, but the words are coming out too fast and he can’t keep up. What if she’s dead?

Clarke knows what he’s trying to say. “Octavia is at the Ark. And if she’s not then we’ll leave and go look for her.”

Fuck. Fuck. She means that. She’ll leave the Ark. Fuck. He stands up and gets back in the car. After she gets in, he speeds down the road at a hundred miles per hour.

It’s around eleven o’clock when they stop for the night. They’ve skipped dinner, except for Collins, who Clarke feeds while they’re driving. Bellamy wanted to drive all night, but Clarke convinced him to stop. They need to be well rested for tomorrow, when they get to the Ark.

Collins is asleep already. They find a portable crib in the garage of the house and set that up in master, and then they break out Monty’s moonshine.

“One drink,” Clarke says. “And then we need to sleep.”

Five drinks later they’re sprawled out on the bed; their limbs tangled together. Bellamy has been telling more stories of Filipino mythology, and some Greek. He tells her about Aphrodite, and how in ancient layers of myth she was the goddess of war and he tells her about Persephone, and how she was once the goddess of death and chaos.

The moonlight is hitting Clarke’s face as she listens to him. Bellamy is reminded a song he heard on TV once. _I loved a maid as white as winter_ _with moonglow in her hair…_

He stops in the middle of his story about Hera to ask, “Would you really do it?”

She takes another drink. “Do what?”

“Would you really leave the Ark and go with me to find Octavia? Would you really?”

She nods. “Yes,” she says quietly. “Yes.”

He kisses her, hard and rough. She gasps and pulls her head back slightly, before leaning forward and kissing him back. They breathe into each other’s mouths and keep kissing roughly for a few minutes, teeth cracking against each other every so often.

“Wait, wait,” she says and he pulls back. “What about Collins?”

“He’s sleeping,” Bellamy says, breathlessly.

“Right, he’s sleeping. I’m not scarring him for life, because he’s sleeping.”

“Right.” They go back to kissing. They kiss for a long time, drunkenly and messily. They each get spit on their chins and noses. It’s not great, as far as kissing goes, but it’s warm and pleasant. She doesn’t try to take things further. When she falls asleep, he goes into the bathroom and takes himself in hand until he comes, shaking and sweating with Clarke’s name on his lips.

The next morning, Bellamy wakes up before Clarke, his head pounding from a hangover for the second day in a row. Collins is already awake and working his way up to crying about his new tooth. Bellamy gets dresses before taking him into the other room and feeding him some leftover rabbit for breakfast. He rubs some moonshine over Collins’ new tooth so that it won’t hurt so much, like he did with Octavia when she was teething. “Don’t tell your mom, okay?” He says, and Collins says some nonsense sounds at him

After half an hour, Bellamy packs up the car before shaking Clarke away. “Rise and shine Princess, we’ve got an Ark to get to.”

She looks at him, and then hides her face under his pillow. She’s hungover, Bellamy knows. “Where’s Collins?” Her voice sounds shot.

“He’s in the living room. The car’s all packed up. We should be there in a few hours.”

“Okay.”

He nods and leaves the room so she can get ready to leave. They’re on the road in ten minutes.

After about half an hour of silence, he says, “Hey Clarke?”

“Hmm?”

“Why _did_ you leave the Ark when you were fourteen?”

She’s quiet. “Do you remember before the epidemic, the president and his son were shot and killed?”

Thelonious and Wells Jaha. He remembers. It was all anyone could talk about for weeks. They were out at a charity picnic or something like that and some guy walked up and shot them both. He said it was for revenge. His father was killed in a war that President Jaha started.

“Yeah, I remember. Why?”

“My mom was Vice President. She took over for Jaha.”

“Holy shit. You’re Clarke Griffin?”

She smiles. “Yep. President Griffin is my mom. After the epidemic spread to Washington and we started the Ark, everything was really different. The Ark has really strict rules about everything—what work you did, how much school you got, where you lived. My mom and her cabinet kept pretty much everyone in the dark about everything that was happening outside of the Ark, even though she had scouts and stuff that surveyed the rest of the U.S. for her.

“One day, about seven years after the epidemic started, they sort of compiled all the evidence and decided that the United States—civilization—it didn’t exist anymore. You know this, obviously, since you were actually out in the world, but for a few years society was still semi-functioning, before it all fell apart. One day my mom got reports that there were more grounders than there were people, and that the people who were still alive were more savage than we thought they were. But everything was still under control at the Ark, and they wanted to keep it that way. Mom and the cabinet didn’t want anyone in the Ark to find out that it was really as bad as it was. But refugees showed up sometimes, and it was getting harder for them to keep it a secret. They kept refugees on really limited work detail, and in quarters away from everyone else.

“My dad thought that what she was doing was wrong. He thought everyone had the right to know to about what it was like on the outside, and for the refugees to have the same treatment as everyone else. But my mom told him that he couldn’t tell anyone.

“He did it anyway. He told everyone, made some big announcement over the PA system. God. I can still hear him. I remember everything he said.

“They killed him the day afterwards. My mom said he committed treason. People were panicked—there were a lot of people that wanted to leave. There was a screening process on leaving, but people were slipping through the cracks every day. When I found out that my mom ordered him to die, I left in the middle of the night. I wanted to kill her. I was scared that I was going to. A few weeks later, I met Finn and started a life with him outside of the Ark. I never looked back, until I had Collins.”

Bellamy doesn’t know what to say. “Fuck,” he finally settles on. “That’s so shitty. If it were my mom, I would never forgive her.”

“I don’t know if I have,” Clarke admits. “But I want to be back at the Ark, with people. So I’m going to try.”

__________________

They get to the Ark mid-morning. There’s an electrified fence up and armed guards at the gate.

“Get out of the car, and put your hands up,” one of them shouts at them. The guards all have their guns trained on him and Clarke.

They do as their told, lying down on the concrete when they’re told to. A guard comes over and takes their weapons from them. He pats them down to make sure there aren’t any hidden. They’re instructed to stand up, and come to the front of the car. Bellamy asks if he can get the baby out of the backseat and they let him.

The guards still haven’t lowered their weapons. Bellamy hands Collins to Clarke and she holds him close to her chest. Bellamy puts out a protective arm in front of both of them.

“What’s your business here?” One of the guards asks gruffly.

“My name is Clarke Griffin. I’m President Griffin’s daughter. This is my son and my—um—friend. Bellamy. We’ve come to live here.”

They lower the weapons as soon as she says that she’s the president’s daughter. “Come with us please,” they say and lead all three of them inside the gate, and into a building with a narrow hallway.

“Do you know about a refugee named Octavia?” Clarke says as they’re being led.

“We have a lot of refugees,” one of them says. “I don’t know everyone.” Bellamy feels himself losing hope. He needs her to be here.

They get led into a large room, with a table full of people. There’s a woman at the head of table that immediately recognizes Clarke. She says her name twice, voice full of surprise as if she can’t believe her daughter really is right in front of her.

“It’s me, Mom.”

President Griffin gets up from the table and goes to hug Clarke, but Clarke holds her arm out to make sure her mother keeps her distance.

“Mom, this is Collins. He’s my son. This is my friend Bellamy. He’s looking for his sister, Octavia. She’s a refugee. She can’t have been here that long—just a few weeks.”

“Your son?” President Griffin stares at Clarke and Collins in wonder.

“Yes,” Clarke says. President Griffin starts to tear up, and the other people in the room empty out behind Bellamy. He doesn’t have anywhere else to go though, so he stays put. “Mom?” Clarke says impatiently. “Do you know anybody named Octavia?”

“Octavia?”

“Yes Mom,” Clarke says, sounding exasperated. “Octavia. She’s a refugee. She’s Bellamy’s sister. She’s been here a few weeks.”

“Yes,” President Griffin says. “Yes, I know Octavia. She works part time in the clinic.”

Bellamy feels like he can’t stand. She’s alive. She’s alive. _She’s alive._ She’s alive and she works in a clinic. She’s alive and she’s here and she’s safe. He feels dizzy, and realizes that he forgot to breath.

“Where is the clinic?” He finally asks.

President Griffin summons a guard from the hallways and tells him to take Bellamy to the clinic. “I’ll see you later Clarke,” Bellamy says and she smiles at him.

The walk to the clinic is short, and he spots Octavia instantly. She’s wearing her hair in complex braids and her clothes look like they were sew together from various animal hides. She has a tribal tattoo around her bicep and another that wraps around her forearm and hand.

“O?” he says quietly. She doesn’t hear him, and so he says it again.

She turns to him and says, “Bell?” before running over to him and throwing her arms around him. “Bellamy,” she says, over and over.

“O, O, O,” he parrots back. They hold onto each other for a long time. Eventually Octavia tells the other staff at the clinic that she’s taking off early, and leads him to her cabin.

“I can’t believe you found me,” she says on the walk.

“I can’t believe you left me,” he counters.

“Bell…”

“Why did you? I… Why did you leave me?”

“Bellamy,” she sighs and stops walking. “I had to. I just had to. I saw you taking care of me every day and I just—I wanted to make sure that I could take care of myself. I’m sorry. I only meant to be gone for a few days, but when I went back you had already left. And then I met Lincoln and his clan and we heard about the Ark from this girl and we decided to come here. I’m sorry, Bellamy. I never wanted to hurt you.”

He’s quiet for a few minutes. He looks at her.

“I know you didn’t. Who’s Lincoln?”

She starts walking again. “Um,” she starts. “He’s my boyfriend. I traveled here with his clan—they’re like his family.”

Bellamy knows he can’t get mad about her having a boyfriend. She’s her own person. It took her running away from him and him spending months hunting and tracking her down before he realized that. She’s her own person.

When she gets to her cabin, it’s empty. It’s obvious several people live here. There are two bunks three beds high, a large table in the middle of the room and a fireplace. Octavia sets her stuff from the clinic down on the table. “That’s my bed,” she says and points to the bottom bed of the bunk on the right side of the room. “Indra sleeps above me and Lexa above her. Lincoln, Anya and Nyko sleep on the other set. You can take my bed or the floor while you’re waiting for your cabin assignment, if you want. Usually people live with the people from their work detail, but since we came as a group they put us all together.” Bellamy agrees to sleep on the floor while he waits.

A few days later, he gets his work detail. He gets guard duty, the eleven p.m. to seven a.m. shift. He moves what few things he has (the Care Bears backpack, extra socks Lincoln gave him and a flashlight) into the guards’ cabin and tries to make friends. He’s bad at it, but he eventually learns to just keep to himself. He sees Octavia every day. He’s still trying to learn how to let her be a person that doesn’t need him to watch her all the time. He’s worse at that than he is at making friends, but he’s trying.

Bellamy is bad this place. He’s bad at rules and rigid structure. He feels like a caged animal, like he might snap at any moment. But he’s here. And he’s learning. For Octavia, he’ll learn.

He hasn’t seen Clarke or Collins since he left them the first day, even when he goes back into that first building. He misses them. He wonders if Collins’ tooth has grown in yet, and where Clarke is working. Or maybe she’s in school still? Octavia told him that everyone has to do school until they're twenty, but she got out of it since she never went in the first place. She gets a lot of on-the-job training at the clinic.

He asks the other, older guards about her, but they laugh at him and tell him that the president’s daughter would never be with a guard. He wants to explain that he just wants to _see_ her. Even if she never wanted him like he wants her—and he _does_ want her—he would settle for just knowing that she was okay here, with her mom.

And then one day, he does see her. She’s walking out of the clinic as he’s on his way to the mess hall for dinner. She shouts her name and jogs over to her.

She hugs him when she sees him. “Hey! Where are you headed?”

“Just going for dinner.”

“Oh, I’m headed that way too. I’ll walk with you.”

He asks her how she’s been as they walk and eat together. She says that she’s been good. Her mother has her in school in the early mornings and interning at the clinic in the evenings. Collins is in daycare most of the day, which is hard on her and harder on him. He’s been with her 24/7 his entire life. “He’ll adjust,” she says, “but right now it’s really difficult.” Getting along with her mom has also been hard, but she’s trying to make it work for Collins’ sake. Abby—her mom—is in love with her grandson, which helps. Collins is with Abby right now, Clarke says.

Bellamy tells Clarke about guard duty, and Octavia, and Lincoln, and how he’s having a hard time here. She says that she’s been having trouble adjusting too. Being out in the world for so long has them both feeling cooped up. She suggests that they sneak out one day and he tries to act scandalized. The idea is appealing. He wouldn’t mind going back out to go hunting or fishing. They have people here who do that as a work assignment, plus they raise pigs.

They sneak onto the roof of the mess hall together and lie out and watch the stars after the sun sets. Eventually he tells her he has to go to work.

“I wish we had the same hours, so we could hang out during the day. You sleep all day, right? Because you’re up all night?”

He nods. “Yeah, that’d be nice. If only one of us where the president’s daughter and could ask her to change our work schedules.” Clarke laughs.

The next day, his superior tells him his schedule was changed. Now he works the seven a.m. to noon shift and the four p.m. and seven p.m. shift. He smiles and heads off to work.

__________________

Clarke is waiting outside his cabin. It’s five thirty in the morning.

“C’mon,” she says and takes his hand. She leads him to the back of the Ark. “The fence isn’t electrified here.” She wiggles her way under the fence and he follows.

She hands him a pistol, and they trek out into the forest behind the Ark. They spend the next hour hunting and laughing together.

She kisses him during sunrise, soft and gentle, before telling him that she loves him.

He loves her too.

**Author's Note:**

> sooo i wanted to write something quick and easy and somehow this turned into a 15k road trip/kid fic/Sacajawea and Lewis and Clarke/zombie AU. how is this my life?


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